Prelude and feud

Q: The Wall Street Journal recently cited speculation that Russia’s aggressive military recruitment “preludes another draft.” If I had written it, I would have used “presages.” Any thoughts? A: Yes, we too would have used a verb like “presage” or “foreshadow” instead of “prelude,” which can mean to introduce or precede but lacks the ominous sense of the other words. But it’s interesting that in the past, “prelude” did sometimes have a sense of foreboding, as did praeludere, the Latin source of the English verb. In classical Latin, praeludere meant to compose a prelude or make a trial attempt, but in post-classical Latin, it could also mean to introduce or foreshadow, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. When the word “prelude” first appeared in English in the 16th century, the OED says, it was a noun meaning “an introduction, a preface; a precursor.” The dictionary’s earliest citation is from a 1548 English translation, edited by Nicholas Udall, of Erasmus’s Latin Paraphrases…